Plasma 6 - 6 Months Review
| ~5 minute read
For about 6 months, I've been using KDE Plasma 6 as my desktop environment. Let's first talk about why.
Since I started using linux, I tried various desktop environments, including Gnome 3, KDE, Mate and XFCE. Out of those I really loved KDE (and XFCE if it really had to be lightweight), but I soon moved on to standalone, tiling window managers and never looked back. My old potato laptop liked my decision too.
Since I got my new laptop, I'd been using XMonad as my daily driver. I installed XFCE for some reason but never used it, and might have checked out other window managers but never for more than a single day. So I can safely say I'd never really experienced anything other than XMonad for about 4 years. For a change I decided to use a DE. Part of the reason was that Plasma 6 was here, and I'd just stick to window managers rather than using anything other than KDE.
First impressions of KDE
Plasma looks good out of the box, and it's arguably the sexiest window manager out there. And now that plasma lets you choose the accent color, I didn't spend any time on making it look pretty. I did have to disable the floating taskbar because it was glitchy (probably only on X) but apart from that I had default KDE. SDDM looks nice, it was easy to use dvorak in both the desktop and the login screen.
Didn't take me long to get used to floating window management, and I somehow only needed 4 virtual desktops instead of the usal 10. But whenever I was doing much multitasking, something just felt wrong. KDE Connect's clipboard sharing was a nice addition to my workflow, though.
What I'll miss
Plasma is a fully fledged desktop, and it really shows. The "low battery" notification that I didn't have to configure, or the acoustic feedback it plays when I plug the charger in, those things have totally spoiled me and I definitely need to figure out how to get those in a WM.
The keyboard layout switcher is also amazing. I don't have to write terminal commands to quickly switch to QWERTY, Whaaaat!
And the basic stuff, it auto-detecting the display when I plug in HDMI, or the OSD it shows when I change the brightness or the volume, it just feels good. Thankfully it probably won't be too hard getting on a window manager.
What I Won't miss
Annoying glitches
It's most likely because I have an Nvidia card, but KDE is really buggy. I've noticed it being better when I use integrated graphics but that's not an option for me. When the display configuration changes, it sometimes crashes and doesn't respond for a minute or so before restarting again. I don't wanna figure out why's that happening, if I had to do that I'd just use a WM, it's easier troubleshooting that.
One day I had a presentation and plugged my laptop into a projector and KDE broke down for a good 2-3 minutes (felt like an hour) which was embarrassing. A WM has chances of breaking in these situations too, but I can troubleshoot that much quickly, not like it refuses to respond, at least.
Some of those animations are glitchy too, especially the floating (or dynamic or whatever they call it) taskbar. That thing is splendid but it seems like it lags too much on Nvidia graphics. I haven't had these issues otherwise.
Huge packages
KDE installs a lot of packages, and it's not minimal at all. It may not be too much for most people, but I don't like when if I don't update for a week, it has to download 2k+ packages, which is honestly annoying, I want it to update and be done with it.
Multitasking's not fun
Floating window management is a horrible, horrible option if you want to multitask a lot. I know it's possible to replace Kwin but I honestly don't want to go through the headache of that. If I'm in a DE, I want the DE experience, and in a WM I want the WM experience.
But whenever I have 4+ programs open I keep missing the 10 workspaces and the tiling window management keybindings my XMonad setup had. It's honestly ridiculous to maximize a window when it's the only one open. Also the deskstop switcher is ugly when I have 4+ virtual desktops. Not that I need that much since I can just minimise windows. Still doesn't match my workflow.
Conclusion
KDE is splendid and I'll continue to admire it from afar. It's the best DE ever made but DEs are just not for me. For the past week I've been using DWM (with only the fullgaps patch) and I honestly don't miss KDE that much. I probably won't stick to DWM for long, but I already feel more connected with my laptop.
I'll be doing some WM hopping for some time before settling down on something. I'll keep writing about it. Let's see if XMonad is still the best one, or if I'll finally keep something else as my daily driver.